The Gettysburg Flying Service operated airplane tours of the battlefield from the west slope of Oak Ridge in the 1920s (cf.
[1] In 1937, TBD Bircher took over the Boulevard airport in southeast Pennsylvania ("William Penn airport" when opened in 1917, closed 1951),[2] but his World War II flight training school was "forced to move from Philadelphia because of wartime restrictions on flying.
"[3] Bircher bought the W. A. Kelly farm near Gettysburg,[4] for the Gettysburg Flying Service and in 1942 the new airport was built along the Mummasburg Road (2 runways of 1/2 mile and 1900 feet) after being granted a Civilian Aeronautics Administration license.
[5] Lighting was added to the 1895 Oak Ridge Observation Tower, and the airport's World War II Civilian Pilot Training program included Temple University students from the battlefield's Lee-Meade Inn.
)[7] In 1947, farm chicks survived an airplane crash at the airport but died in a subsequent hangar fire [8][9][10] while in the 1950s, President Eisenhower used the airport to travel between The White House[clarification needed] and his Gettysburg farm.